Sensible Socialist
21st July 2011, 00:36
From SocialistWorker.
IT'S OFFICIAL--Sandy Pope will be on the ballot for general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Pope, who is running with the support of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), the union's opposition movement, was nominated at the Teamsters' July convention in Las Vegas.
This may seem like the normal democratic process, but not in the Teamsters. Pope submitted petitions signed by more than 50,000 members just to be able to have her name placed in nomination.
She had to win the votes of 5 percent of the delegates to gain her place on the October ballot. This would have been easy except that most of the delegates were local officers, many of them indebted to the incumbent administration. Others just felt threatened by any reform candidate.
When she accepted the nomination, Sandy Pope began by telling the delegates:
Our union is at a turning point. We can meet the challenges ahead. But we need stronger leadership. That's why I'm running for general president. Wall Street has driven the economy over a cliff. Corporations and corporate politicians want to make unions a scapegoat. They know that the union movement is the only thing standing in the way of unchallenged corporate control.
She closed with a stirring call to action: "The fight for our future starts now. We're going to win this election the same way we're going to rebuild our union--by organizing Teamster to Teamster. The future is ours to win--let's build it together."
I don't have any knowledge of the inner workings of Teamsters. Is this something to look foward to? Are we seeing movements within unions stray away from the typical hierarchy of unions, or will the larger established unions continue to be largely inneffectual in the labor movement, as opposed to years past?
http://socialistworker.org/2011/07/20/teamster-reformer-makes-ballot
IT'S OFFICIAL--Sandy Pope will be on the ballot for general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Pope, who is running with the support of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), the union's opposition movement, was nominated at the Teamsters' July convention in Las Vegas.
This may seem like the normal democratic process, but not in the Teamsters. Pope submitted petitions signed by more than 50,000 members just to be able to have her name placed in nomination.
She had to win the votes of 5 percent of the delegates to gain her place on the October ballot. This would have been easy except that most of the delegates were local officers, many of them indebted to the incumbent administration. Others just felt threatened by any reform candidate.
When she accepted the nomination, Sandy Pope began by telling the delegates:
Our union is at a turning point. We can meet the challenges ahead. But we need stronger leadership. That's why I'm running for general president. Wall Street has driven the economy over a cliff. Corporations and corporate politicians want to make unions a scapegoat. They know that the union movement is the only thing standing in the way of unchallenged corporate control.
She closed with a stirring call to action: "The fight for our future starts now. We're going to win this election the same way we're going to rebuild our union--by organizing Teamster to Teamster. The future is ours to win--let's build it together."
I don't have any knowledge of the inner workings of Teamsters. Is this something to look foward to? Are we seeing movements within unions stray away from the typical hierarchy of unions, or will the larger established unions continue to be largely inneffectual in the labor movement, as opposed to years past?
http://socialistworker.org/2011/07/20/teamster-reformer-makes-ballot